Watched this #solarpunk themed game trailer and couldn't stop thinking about this monumental text https://alxd.org/solarpunk-lenses-and-foundations.html , where the urge to create compelling political imagery as a basis for common effort is emphasized. I understand there are big challenges for our imagination here. Firstly due to visual excesses of current culture. Also it takes a lot of talent to be artistic, political and critical at the same time. This lead to quite many unsuccessful attempts at this new visual language, or hieroglyph as @alxd puts it. For example, it is very common to see tropes of corporate architectural greenwashing, or highly decorated art noveau-ish #architecture, which features excessive decoration, directly linked to colonial exploitation and extreme inequality.
This is what I'm thinking of, watching this game's trailer where the first shots are focused on axing a tree.
@dudenas thank you!
The hieroglyph is from Neal Stephenson's Innovation Starvation (I must have forgotten to link it!): https://www.wired.com/2011/10/stephenson-innovation-starvation/
As I mentioned in my essay, a lot of books, movies and games are not incentivized to creat hieroglyphs. I think this tree chopping shot was just a nod to #minecraft, not a new #solarpunk proposal.
Speaking #games, I think only Disco Elysium brought a fresh set of symbols in the recent years, and we can see how that is going for them...
@dudenas I dont have that article on hand, but from what I remember, Disco Elysium was an art project first and a game later, not expecting a huge commercial success.
I think it became such a big hit only thanks to this huge risk, proposing something fresh, wholly new, without corporate oversight and managerial meddling. It could easily have been too alien though.